When I was a kid I was a terrible reader. Maybe I had a little dyslexia, I don’t know, but I sure hated reading. Nonetheless, many of the books I read stuck with me. One of them was a short story by Edgar Allan Poe “The Purloined Letter.” It’s a story about a blackmailer trying to hide a letter from Edgar Allan Poe’s famous Detective Dupin. His trick is to hide the letter in plain sight along with the other letters on his desk. I was thinking about this story while preparing for today’s interview with alien contact researcher Mary Rodwell because alien contact is a phenomena that despite the hundreds of movies, television shows and books, the topic remains hidden — particularly from science.

How does one reveal that which is hidden in plain sight? Maybe the same way that Edgar Allan Poe’s Detective Dupin hid it in the “Purloined Letter.” Look in the obvious places. That’s what today’s guest Mary Rodwell and the group at FREE (The Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters) has done. They marshaled a group of well-qualified academics (including a Harvard physicists and highly regarded psychology professor) to compile the first comprehensive, academic-quality research survey into alien contact. The results, although challenging, may be a first step towards revealing that which has been hidden in plain sight. I hope you enjoy my interview with Mary Rodwell.

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Alex Tsakiris: People understand the passion that you feel about this and really the common sense approach that you’ve taken to saying, this is happening. It’s been addressed by these highly respected people. We have every reason to believe that it’s true but then they look around and say, but Mary, if this is true the implications of this would be so enormous that this would be the most researched topic in the world, bar none. It’s the most important topic for our species so of course it would be the researched. Then they look at the research and there’s virtually none. How do you address that?

Mary Rodwell: Look, it’s understandable. I think I would be saying the same thing. This is the most important issue for mankind: are we alone? And if we’re not why don’t we know about it? And then you have to, unfortunately for many who struggle with that, you have to look at the truth embargo. And you have to understand the basis of that truth embargo.

Alex Tsakiris: I had an interesting interview with a gentleman from Ohio State University, Dr. Alexander Wendt. And we talked about a number of different topics. We didn’t even talk about his rather controversial and I think very insightful paper that he wrote on the UFO issue from a political science perspective. Here’s a guy, a very highly respected academic at a major university, who is doing the obvious “the emperor has no clothes” and saying wait a minute, I don’t have to say whether or not the UFO phenomenon is real or not real. I can look at it from a political science standpoint, from a world politics standpoint, and say if it’s true, it’s the most fundamental security risk for our country and for every other country. So let’s set aside whatever you think the evidence is and bump this [issue] up to the top in terms of priority. Of course that kind of straightforward logic just falls on deaf ears apparently. But maybe we’ve wrestled that to the ground to at least give people a grounding to understand that this strange world we find ourselves in, where no one is doing serious research on this topic, does have some possible root causes for it. And with that, let’s talk about what you and the FREE organization [are doing]–and I understand you’re not the one spearheading it but I know you’re involved in this survey. Tell us about the survey looking into UFO-related contact experiences.

Mary Rodwell: The important thing about FREE and why it was if you like, instigated–and I was one of the co-founders–was exactly that. There was nothing obvious out there that was looking at this from the broad perspective that we need to start with. A lot of the UFO groups have done surveys on what we call the ‘nuts and bolts’ of this kind of experience. How big was the craft? How many people saw it? What camera did you use? Were there trace elements? Did anything else happen that we could tangibly look at in terms of evidence? But what they weren’t doing, and what I as a therapist have always focused on first: How has this affected you? What changes has it made in your life? Has it made any? Because that’s what they have to deal with when you’ve got one belief system of a 3-D, scientific world. And this is what you believe is your reality, and then you wake up one night and the room is filled with blue light and you’re seeing a seven foot tall mantid, luminescent being standing in front of you. And you’re a scientist and you’re saying, what-the…? And the next day your partner says, did you see that thing in the room last night. [Now] you’ve got to start saying am I really crazy? Or is there something going on here? And this is a true scenario from a scientist I know very well. So then it’s, oh my God, if I’m not crazy then what is this? What’s going on? For me, that’s the kind of thing I’m faced with.

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Mary Rodwell: What we’ve found [in the survey] that’s absolutely incredible: 60% had out-of-body experiences. About 28% had near-death experiences. Nearly 70% had very positive, benevolent kinds of experiences. So all that’s been put out about this whole phenomena, our surveys as open-ended as they were, people saying for me this is how it was, we were getting some incredibly startling results.

Alex Tsakiris: You’ve given us an idea of the results but paint us that picture again: what are some of the big takeaways or headlines that you get from the survey results at this point?

Mary Rodwell: The headlines for me, or should I say, [what] I think the public should take notice of, they have been fed that most of the time these encounters are negative and most people end up terrified. Our results are saying the complete reverse of that: perhaps about 25% are still traumatized or have traumatic experiences; 70-75% are positive; they find it loving; they feel themselves connected to these beings. All of this is coming out in our surveys. They’re also talking about the different types of beings for example, that they’re seeing or are connected to. It’s not just the little Greys or the Reptilians or the standard ones, or the odd humanoid. We’ve got 50% that actually see humanoids [and] not only small Greys but tall Greys; blue beings; light beings; crystalline beings; lion/cat beings. There’s a whole range of different species that are interacting with humanity at this moment in time. So those are really important for people to realize that it’s not just one species here. It is a whole range. And for them their interactions in many cases have been illuminating, positive, and have been helpful. I work a lot with the children for example, and what the children are saying–and all of it is conscious memory with children. They don’t have hypnosis. This is conscious recall. They talk about what they’re learning on the craft. And that’s the other thing that I just mentioned briefly: how many feel that they’ve had downloads of incredible information from quantum physics right through to the origin of the species; to understanding health and our biology from a multidimensional perspective. So the information downloads are really quite incredible.

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Alex Tsakiris: I want to return to one other finding you mentioned earlier that is of particular interest to me because we’ve talked about it so much on this show. That is, the idea of an extended consciousness realm or realms. What might be the connection between the extraterrestrial encounter and that extended consciousness? Can you make any speculation about that?

Mary Rodwell: That’s a very deep rabbit hole, and I’ve probably gone pretty far down it. What comes to me in terms of understanding this from the very big picture is that many of those in their terms of understanding have come to this planet at this particular time because there seems to be a program for a consciousness shift in humanity.

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Alex Tsakiris: I recently heard an excellent interview with Dr. Rick Strassman, famous for DMT: The Spirit Molecule. I’ve interviewed him on this show but I have to say, the interview that I heard did a much better job of really exploring that original research he did with DMT intravenously–which is a highly powerful hallucinogen. The net result was he said that there were these other beings, some of them are exactly the kind of beings that you’re describing, and that have been described for hundreds or even thousands of years by people in the Shamanic communities around the world. [And] as the UFO phenomenon has become more understood here they’ve been identified there as well. But the punchline is, okay, where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you here. And I’ve never been one to jump on board the consciousness shift [idea] because I think every culture and every society at any point always thinks they’re the special ones that are transitioning. So I’m a little leery of that. But sometimes the evidence does seem to point to this development that someone can reach. Then they make that shift and jump over to that other realm. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Mary Rodwell: Yes. For me, when I say the consciousness shift, the only reason that I’ve come to that conclusion and I really want to convey that although I’m really open minded, that doesn’t equate with gullibility. The bottom line for me: I need enough from both my left analytical mind as well as my sense of knowing and awareness from my right brain to be convinced that something has a tangibility in the first place. The fascinating thing with the Shamanic way of waking up as I call it–because I think there are many different ways that we may decide as a soul to wake up and smell the roses, as I call it–is through the Shamanic route whether it’s through Ayahuasca which allows that interesting kind of shift to see the matrix; to see the holographic perspective which DMT does without question. I had my first clue when I was doing a debate at Oxford University where a student came up to me and said something very interesting: “Mary, I’ve got a friend who took magic mushrooms and he saw a Grey when he took them. Was that genetic memory or was that in fact him seeing a Grey?” Immediately I responded and said I suspect that he was actually seeing the Grey. Because what DMT does as we know, it allows you to see more of the multidimensional nature of reality. I’ve met many people that have experienced it and described it to me in terms of the beings they’ve interacted with and their understanding of the matrix. One of them happens to be a scientist who’d been struggling with everything having to do with his multidimensional experience. Seeing orbs flying around freaked him out. I couldn’t even mention the word ‘energy’ to him because he would roll his eyes and say, there’s Mary talking about energy again… until he experienced the DMT Ayahuasca. Then he came back and he actually could talk about energy. He could honor the fact that he was seeing orbs flying around and strange wispy things because that gave him a tangibility in a strange way because he’d seen it for himself.

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